Heading home. It will be a long day of driving. Expect blogging to resume sometime tomorrow.
Archive for the ‘Admin’ Category
Travel day.
Monday, October 4th, 2021Travel day.
Wednesday, September 29th, 2021Going to be driving pretty much all day. Blogging will be catch as catch can today and for the next few days.
With twelve you get eggroll.
Wednesday, July 28th, 2021It seems that I have been blogging for twelve years as of today.
This is, frankly, a number that astonishes me. I really don’t know what to say, beyond the obligatory anniversary post.
And also, thanks to the readers and contributors: Borepatch, Lawrence, Joe D, tim kies, Glypto Dropem (who left a very perceptive comment the other day on chest seals and pennies), Jimmy McNulty, RoadRich, The Real Kurt, Heather Dobrott, and a bunch of other folks I’m probably unintentionally forgetting.
Twelve years. I mean, seriously, the mind boggles. The blogger goes to get another cup of coffee. (In the current official mug of WCD. There is a story behind this, which I may tell at some point: but for now, I do not get any royalties from the sale of these mugs by the NYPost Store.)
Happy Bastille Day!
Wednesday, July 14th, 2021This is a little more off-the-cuff than usual, as I had to go see the bone guy this morning.
Did you know you can get casts in black? I didn’t know they offered a variety of colors.
I’m now very low speed, high drag, but with a tacticool cast. If I apply myself, I may even be able to rig some MOLLE attachment points to it.
Anyway, happy Bastille Day to y’all. Guzzle some wine and listen to “Revolutions” starting right about here. You can thank me later.
Administrative note.
Monday, July 12th, 2021Saturday night, I broke my left wrist.
It was just about the stupidest accident possible: I was at the top of Lawrence’s stairs, lost my balance, and fell all the way to the bottom of the stairs. I gather it was quite spectacular to watch: as best as I can remember, it was somewhat spectacular to experience.
The broken wrist is the worst of it: I have a few bruises, but no head injuries and nothing else broken.
This is just to say that I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox…er, I mean, blogging might be a little slow while I deal with the fallout from this.
Not part of the main jail feed…
Saturday, May 2nd, 2020A couple of things I wanted to make note of, but didn’t want to put in the main video feed:
Great and good FoTB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn did a really cool short video targeted at newer shooters explaining ammunition (and the various types thereof):
This was done for the Polite Society Podcast, which does, of course, have a YouTube channel.
It’s also worth pointing out that Karl has his own channel as well.
Ryan Cleckner, author of the excellent Long Range Shooting Handbook: Complete Beginner’s Guide to Long Range Shooting, has a playlist on the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) channel devoted to long range shooting. This is something I’ve wanted to work on for a while, and I’m hoping once things get back to normal I’ll be able to pursue that.
Also on the NSSF channel: Bryan Litz, author of Applied Ballistics For Long-Range Shooting 3rd Edition and other related works. I got my copy of Applied earlier this week, but haven’t had a chance to crack it yet.
(I should note that any Amazon links here are affiliate links, and I do get a small kickback if you purchase something through those links. I use those small kickbacks for good, not evil, though others might differ with that assessment.)
Obit watch: April 6, 2020.
Monday, April 6th, 2020It is the stated policy of this blog that, if you were a Bond girl, you get an obit watch.
Honor Blackman, “Pussy Galore” in “Goldfinger”. She also preceded Diana Rigg as Patrick Macnee’s partner on “The Avengers”, but left the show for the “Goldfinger” role.
Before “Goldfinger,” she made dozens of appearances on British television and more than 20 feature films, among them “A Night to Remember” (1958), Roy Ward Baker’s drama about the sinking of the Titanic; “The Square Peg” (1959), a comedy with Norman Wisdom set during World War II; and “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963), in which she played the goddess Hera.
Ms. Blackman continued her screen acting career well into her 80s, including taking a small part as a glamorous party guest in “Bridget Jones’s Diary” (2001) and a recurring role on the classic British soap opera “Coronation Street” in 2004.
She worked in the theater for decades as well. In the 1980s she did a British tour of “A Little Night Music” (she deemed Madame Armfeldt in that show her favorite role — “That part just fit me like a glove,” she told the British Huffington Post) and played Captain von Trapp’s child-averse love interest, the Baroness, in a West End revival of “The Sound of Music.”
Ms. Blackman was 94 when she passed.
You know, Lawrence, when things get back to normal, “Cockneys vs. Zombies” might be worth putting on the list.
Speaking of Lawrence, he also tipped me to the death of actress Lee Fierro at the age of 91. She has three credits as an actress: two of those were “Mrs. Kintner” in “Jaws” and “Jaws: The Revenge”.
(“Mrs. Kintner” is the woman whose child is gobbled up by the shark in “Jaws” and then slaps Chief Brody.)
Obit meta watch.
Saturday, February 8th, 2020There’s been a lot of news today.
I’m going to wait until tomorrow and get one mega post up covering everyone, including Orson Bean, Robert Conrad, Kevin Conway, and the last RAF ace from the Battle of Britain.
Not that I’m ignoring anyone, just won’t have time to do justice until tomorrow afternoon.
Tweet of the day.
Thursday, November 28th, 2019Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.
When I was in the Navy it was always my luck that I was either deployed or had duty on those days.
I remember those times being very sad and lonely.
Please remember all of those who stand the watch and can’t be with their families today.
— Point E. Elbo (@ElboNeverDies) November 28, 2019
(It isn’t just the folks in the armed forces who are standing the watch, too. Remember the EMTs and the law enforcement folks and the fire department putting out turkey fryer fires. And the cashiers at the gas stations. And the sysadmins who are carrying the pager or browsing Reddit at work so you can do your “Black Friday” online. And probably lots of other folks who I’m forgetting at the moment.)
(It isn’t Christmas yet, but talking about having duty makes me think its worth calling back to this.)
Many small bloodsucking insects.
Wednesday, August 21st, 2019I think I’ve managed to keep on top of the Austin City Council and Travis County Commissioners lists.
But I let the list of Texas Congressional reps fall into disrepair and obsolesce. And I didn’t think the list of Texas Senators needed to be updated, either.
It seems that the House and Senate IT people (or whoever is in charge of the websites for reps and senators) have been doing a lot of reconfiguration and standardization. Even if the senator or rep hadn’t changed since 2016 or so, there were still broken links to district maps and contact forms. Plus it seems like these folks move office locations about as often as…well, as something that moves a lot.
Anyway, I’ve spent a good chunk of my spare time for the past couple of days updating the Senators and Representatives lists. Just in case you want to make use of those for a specific purpose, such as contacting your rep to explain that a magazine ban is going to cost him his seat in Congress. You know, the usual.
The next bunch of free mental CPU cycles are going to spent going back over the commissioners and city council lists, just to make sure they haven’t slipped in any changes. (It looks like Jeff Travillion has hired some staff members since he took office, and I’ve updated his entry.)
If you good folks notice anything that’s wrong or broken or out of date, please contact me and I’ll get it fixed ASAP.
In the meantime, UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.
TMQ Watch: August 2019.
Monday, August 12th, 2019Looks like the NFL is getting fired up again.
Yes, the loser update will return this year. We haven’t sat down to consider which teams are likely candidates for the Owen-16 trophy, but maybe we’ll get some time to do that between now and the start of the regular season.
But we are sure everyone is asking this question: what of Gregg Easterbrook and “Tuesday Morning Quarterback”? Has he found a new home, since the “Weekly Standard” folded up their tent and headed into the long dark night? And what of “TMQ Watch”? Will that be a recurring feature next year?
To answer the last question first: sadly, no. No “TMQ Watch” in 2019. Why?
To answer many inquiries from Tuesday Morning Quarterback aficionados – just finished novel #4, researching nonfiction book #7, there are only so many hours in the day. So no TMQ this season. Not ruling out for future. pic.twitter.com/sKkPielXIM
— Gregg Easterbrook (@EasterbrookG) August 11, 2019
Not our choice, Easterbrook’s. We may try to keep an eye on his Twitter feed for noteworthy items relating to the NFL. But we’ve found that Easterbrook’s Twitter feed is a reliable way of pressure testing our cerebral arteries, so we don’t recommend making bets on how much and how often we’ll be doing that.
Don’t be evil.
Wednesday, August 7th, 2019I’m seeing reports that Google is deleting gun blogs.
The only one I’ve been able to “confirm” so far is “No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money”: John Richardson has posted on Twitter that his blog has been locked. (Hattip: SayUncle.)
Thing is, one data point doesn’t make a trend, and it could be just incompetent Google support (is that redundant?). Or it could indeed be a Google decision.
My point here is mostly: it doesn’t matter if you’re on Google, or on a third party hosting provider, or even if you own your own server. Back your (stuff) up.
And in that vein, thanks to McThag for the valuable reminder that I hadn’t backed my (stuff) up in a while. A failing which I have since corrected.